Integrative Psychotherapy: How therapists can adopt a developmentally based and relationally focussed approach e-learning course

In this unique and practical e-learning course, Dr Richard Erskine draws on an integrative therapeutic approach that encompasses the primary dimensions of human functioning: cognitive, behavioural, affective and physiological, each within a relational system that allows us as therapists in helping the client to assimilate and harmonise the contents of his or her ego states, relax the defence mechanisms, relinquish the life script, and re-engage the world with full contact. It is the process of making whole: taking disowned, unaware, unresolved aspects of the ego and making them part of the cohesive self.

Through lecture, case vignettes and clinical discussions, the e-learning course emphasises how we can incorporate learnings from Integrative Psychotherapy in conjunction with our primary modalities; and covers the following topics:

·       The eight philosophical principles central to an Integrative approach

·       The centrality of contactful relationships

·       An understanding on unconscious relational patterns

·       The integration of physiology, affective, cognition, and behaviour within a client’s unique relational system

·       The application of child development concepts in psychotherapy with adults

·       Phenomenological, historical, transferential and relational Inquiry

·       The therapeutic significance of acknowledgement, validation, normalization and presence

·       Attunement to the client’s affect, rhythm, and style of cognition

·       The eight Relational-Needs

·       The therapeutic use of the Script System

About the speaker

Richard G. Erskine, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and Training Director of the Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy (New York City and Vancouver).  Originally trained in client-centered child therapy, Dr Erskine also studied Gestalt therapy with both Fritz and Laura Perls.  He is a certified clinical Transactional Analyst and a Licensed Psychoanalyst who has specialized in psychoanalytic self-psychology and object-relations theory.  His work is an integration of these concepts and more than forty years of clinical experience, which has included working with disturbed children, inmates in a maximum security prison, borderline and narcissistic clients, post-traumatic stress and dissociative identity disorders.  Recently his research and clinical practice have focused on the treatment of the schizoid process and on the psychotherapy of obsession.

He is the author of several books and scores of articles on psychotherapy theory and methods.  His best-selling book (with Jan Moursund and Rebecca Trautmann) is “Beyond Empathy: A Therapy of Contact-in-Relationship” (1999, Brunner/Mazel) and most recently, in 2015, he has published “Relational Patterns, Therapeutic Presence” (Karnac).